The Super Cyclone!

Two cousin brothers, one jobless evening, both their fathers out of station, unusually, no restrictions from their mothers, and the perfect setting happened to be during Dushera, some adventure was definitely on cards. They had to have some fun!    

So they decided to go for the newly released and hugely acclaimed Oriya movie named Bidhata (meaning, God), starring Uttam Mohanty and Mihir Das. 

October 27, 1999, 

17:00;

The cousins went ahead with their plan for the movie, with their mothers and their uncle. But their grandfather wasn't really happy with it. According to him, what we understood, something bad was going to happen and he wanted us all to stay at home.But in an Indian middle class family, its the "Bahus" who rule the family. Their mothers persuaded him saying they would be back early. 

21:00;

The movie got over, and it was truly a great movie, fitting to all its hype and the statures of the stars in it. Everyone came out. It was drizzling mildly outside. Until then everything was fine, when suddenly one of them happened to see the sky. It was completely red. It was as if someone had painted the sky with red paint, and then suddenly current went off. It was unusual, cause Orissa then happened to be very self sufficient as far as power was concerned and cutting off power in the capital, that to during Dushera, a festival totally lifeless in the part without their beautifully lighted pendals, was very unusual. And then we started hearing some announcements from a Police Jeep in a distance. It became louder and started to come from all around the place. The voice was kind of eerie, but my uncle, being a proud new recruit to the Indian Air Force, happened to hear it properly, and asked us to get in the car as soon as possible and drove. We were supposed to have dinner out, instead parcelled it to home, and on the way bought some candles and biscuits. We did not quite get the reason behind the rush, but we did hear the word "Batya" (Oriya for Cyclone) many times, but didn't really know what it meant. With the mystery of the word "Batya" in our heads, we reached home, quickly had dinner and were put to bed.

October 28, 1999,

06:00;

I woke up, and suddenly got an essence of some kind of buzz going around, in the house. I went out to the dining area, and everyone was already there and were gazing out as if they never saw that huge window in the dining room before. Paying a little more attention, I saw air was flowing outside, and then a little more attention, I saw wind was blowing at a speed more than 200 kmph!! Current was gone, cable of the TV was gone, It was raining heavily and wind flowing at more than 200kmph. It was a cyclone, the 1999 Orissa Super Cyclone. 

We did not know what exactly it was then. Was it happening all over India, or just over Bhubaneswar, we were totally clueless, when suddenly my badepapa called from Kolkata (luckily the landlines were still functional). He was the first contact,who explained exactly what it was, and gave strict instructions, not to go out of the house, and we thought that was obvious and we would obviously not leave the house and go out, but until evening.

13:00;

We had a light lunch. The sound of the air had grew and was peaking at 260kmph. It was growing kinda scary, when the last resort for any sort of help was about to go off in front of our eyes. A mango tree was almost uprooted and was about to fall on the land-line telephone pole. Cellular network then was very costly and only my badepapa had one. We immediately called him saying that was probably the last call to him. And the tree knocked off the pole, leaving us all to ourselves.

16:00;

The rains continued, the wind continued, the only thing that stopped was words coming out of every ones mouth. And then we realised, water had started entering the house through the drawing room. All tries to stop it, went in vain, and within half an hour, every part of the floor was wet. The water started growing. We were terrified. And on top of it, we were just one part of the family. There was my father, who was at Paradeep, which happened to be a port city. There were my maternal grandparents and uncles, also in a place close to a coast. We had no clue whatsoever about them after our own landline was down. The tension was killing us all, especially for my father. 

19:00;

Water was now almost reaching bed height. We were all on one bed and the mattresses started to get wet. It was time to do something. We no longer could wait in the house. We had to move to a higher place. Going totally out would have been very risky, so we decided to move up to the staircase room which lead to the roof. The staircase room had the entrance from outside the house. So basically we had to risk the cyclone to get their, and we had no other alternative. We took along with us, every single thing that was edible, few bedsheets and a few candles and matches. We kids were lifted by elders on their arms, risking the cyclone, we finally reached the room, climbed half way up, and all of us sat there. 

21:00;

We had all reached the staircase room. I was so scared that not a single piece of word was coming out of my mouth. I generally don't talk much but still. Unfortunately, we had forgotten that the room had a roof of asbestos. And worse, there were five coconut trees around and if they managed to fall, would definitely fall on the house. The asbestos, due to the wind kept making noises as if someone was breaking glass on it. Probably to give us   little hope or may be just to break the silence, my grandfather started telling about his own experiences about a similar cyclone in 1982. And it was least of all, a bit comforting to hear someone talk after so long. We spent the whole night there. Probably at about 3:00 in the morning I dozed off. 

October 29, 1999,

07:00;

Was the time about which I woke up. The cyclone had subsided. We had survived. The asbestos was safe, one of the coconut trees did manage to fall, but we were safe. But then came in the tension about others, more specifically my father. We tried contacting everyone possible authority, still there was no clue. We finally got in contact with my maternal grandparents, who lived close to Paradeep, and got to know that my uncle with his friends, had already left for Paradeep to search for him. 

Next few days:

The tension continued for two more days, when finally on the third day, he reached home. His part of the story was even more adventurous (may be another post!) but we were so very happy to see him. He and his colleague had literally pushed a car along with them for about 20km in order to drive the next 90 odd km, pushing aside corpses, and corpses of not just human beings..... I am sure I would have died, had I been in such a situation, but I know, my father is great!

On the fourth day, my badepapa arrived, and we knew we were all safe. But the cyclone left its marks so deep that its still remembered as one of the worst natural calamities in Indian History. It killed more than 15,000 people, making lakhs of people homeless. I myself have been through two more floods, a mild earthquake and two scary flights, but nothing comes as close to this.

India, post 26/11

26th November 2008, one of the bloodiest days in the recent past of India, is something that no true Indian can ever forget. It was the day, when 10 terrorists executed their months of meticulous planning to spread terror in the economic capital of India, Mumbai, ruthlessly murdering nearly 200 innocent people. The attacks were clearly an attempt to push India and Pakistan into yet another deadly battle, and they almost succeeded, but hats off to the Indian government's diplomacy, and help from the international community, that the war that was looming was averted. Yes, a lot of people are sceptical about the the UPA government including me, but in their tenure, the International diplomacy and the nuclear deal were the two major things where this government managed to stand out. 

3 years have passed, the heartless, soulless culprit is still a national guest, making we, the citizens of India, live under the fear of death at each and every step. Security checks, frisking, metal detectors and under belly mirrors are now a inseparable parts of our lives. From the swanky metro stations of Delhi, to the Malls of Chennai, every single, major establishments have turned into fortresses. From the shopping at the high Bazars of Kolkata to even a romantic walk by the seas in Mumbai, nothing in public happens without the ire of guns. Small kids were deeply touched watching the gory images of fire and smoke emanating from the heritage wing of the Taj, a symbol of an Indian win over the wraths of Britishers, and pictures from elsewhere. Infact I myself was so touched that, after having done an year and a half of preparation of JEE, I wanted to join IMA or NDA. I still remember how I spent those Wednesday to Saturday, under immense fear, glued to the TV, the city under high alert, classes were cancelled...

I am the kind of person, who values his self respect and principles utmost. For me there is nothing more important than my self respect and my privacy and I always give back the same respect to everyone. Why should I let someone frisk me?! Why should I let someone see through my mother's purse, or my father's coat?! But in this selfish world, where everyone just wants their own motives to be fulfilled, you don't know whom to believe and whom not to. Where people say something and actually mean something else, where they are something outside and something else inside, I suffer. Everytime I have to buy a gift for someone dear to me or a book for myself or enjoy a movie with my friends or board a flight to go meet my grandparents, I have to "cooperate" with the security. I surely don't enjoy it, and I am sure no one does, but that is what our lives have become after these terrorist attacks. They drive fear in us and make us submit to this inhumanity. I hope just one day, just one day in my lifetime, I get to see a fearless world, where I can be assured that I won't be harmed, neither will someone I love and care for. 

I also take this opportunity to pay tribute to Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, Hemant Karkare, Vijay Salaskar, Ashok Kamte, and all others who died during the attacks and their families. You are all martyrs, and its because of your greatness, that we are all alive today.

A new perspective to life!

I look back 5 months from now; I realize how much things in my life have changed. I was a Delhi wala then, now I am a Chennaite. Then, I was a complete atheist. I questioned each and everything. I wanted scientific explanations for everything. Now I know that there are certain things that just can’t be explained. They can just be felt. Then I was a 100% non-vegetarian, now I am 70% non-vegetarian, 25% pure vegetarian, and 5% fruitarian. Explaining that is too complicated. I have now given up on one and half years of hard work on a project, may be because it demanded something from me and my life wanted something else, and I chose my life. Again something too complicated to explain. Of course it was hard, but one great thing out of it is that, now I seem to have a lot of time for myself (readers discretion required on gauging the scale of "a lot"). And I have finally started watching a serial in IIT-M. Its not that I don't like serials. But I don't like serials that do not get over in just a single episode. They sort of either make you too anxious for the next episode or they become too predictive, that you don't really have to see the next episode. Plus they are an addiction. So if you haven't seen them before, don't start figuring them out now! My list of serials were always one episode affairs, and were essentially on travel, food or music. Some of my favourites were Highway on my plates, Musafir hoon yaron, Zayka India ka, Rangoli (I loved Rangoli on DD). Recently, I came across the Dewarists. I saw it and was honestly blown away. This is just the right combination of music and travel. I have seen two episodes of it and its just amazing.

Minds without fear, when it started off with the beautiful Samode Palce, I got reminded of my own memories of the pink city and its beautiful palaces. Vishal-Sekhar, by far are my favourite composers. Love each and every song of their's. Starting right from the likes of Musu Musu Hasi, Bahara, Allah ke Bande to the likes of Cash and Chammak Challo! The song that they made in the episode was superb. I would quote Drew Barrymore here, something she said about music in the movie, Music and Lyrics, and I liked it a lot, that "A melody is like seeing someone for the first time, the physical attraction, the sex! But then, as you get to know the person, that's the lyrics, their story, who they are underneath. Its the combination of the two that makes the magic!". (On a side note, if you didn't really like that, for me, Drew Barrymore's accent is enough to like anything she says.. :P) In this case there was the lyrics of the Minds Without Fear, by Rabindranath Tagore, and the melody of Vishal-Sekhar and Imogene Heap (Didn't know her, but a Grammy to her name, must be someone great!). It had to make magic!

Kya khayal hai, again a great combination of Indo-Pak. If you cut the shit out of the Indo-Pak relationship, its just the same country with two different names. We all have grown up to the same "Mughalon ki kahaniyan" the same Sufi Music, the same Ghazals, the same Ghulam Ali, Jagjit Singh, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the same Javed Akhtar, the same Hindi Movies, and even the same street food. I know, as I am writing, I am getting reminded of Chawri Bazar, and Chandni Chowk, the Parathe wali gali... I miss Delhi... Among all the four in this episode, I only knew Shantanu Moitra, especially for Parineeta, and the song Bawara Mann. This episode and the song Kya khayal hai, also turned out to be really superb. 

Now what I would really like to see one day would be a fusion of Rajasthani folk songs, Punjabi, Hindustani Classical and any other Indian traditional/folk music, something crudely in the lines of Mile Sur. Of course it's really really difficult, but just may be, one day!

The bottom line is, I have been through a really really tough times in the past five months or so, the most harassing, emotional, and testing times of my life. Thank you for being there with me, you know who you are. Even when you were not, I imagined, you were. I thoroughly regret and repent those two words, and always will. After a few great weeks now, the great Diwali, I find my jovial and funny moods are back. I am happy that I am back!! :) 

The "FUN" "ELEC" Trip

I know! Non Elecites, your first reaction would be, that is nothing but an oxymoron, two contradictory words put together. Long touted to be the most muggu dept. of 2009 batch, the most "RG"ing dept. of 2009 batch and don't know what all adjectives, we proved you absolutely wrong, when we pulled off that awesome trip to Mahabalipuram on 18.09.2011. I do not know what exactly it was, the pain of listening to "com'on people! ultimately whatever you do, you are screwed" or may be the forceful feed of "feel" of things that most of us don't really want to feel, or just wanted to live life with the insane amounts of cash people have got/going to get from interns, or may be just the Zindegi Na Milegi Dobara effect, people thought, we have done enough for the past four years, we really need a break, one spark on facebook, turned into a fire within a week, then partially dozed off and then caught up again just two days before the trip.

 I am sure most of us would not have made it to class if it was on a lovely drizzling Sunday morning, but we all made it to the bus on time, fully prepared for an exciting/adventurous/fun-filled trip ahead of us.Unable to decide what to do in the bus, we shifted from listening to music (starting off with KANK, what an irony!!) to playing dumb charades with movies. The trip was about loads of fun, games, soaking in water, sun and getting dirty alright, but it was also about getting to know each other better. Everyone revealed a side of their personality, unknown to others. And in dumb charades, it was Sidhharth Reddy Maryada (a.k.a Telengana), who revealed his awesome, highly encoded and absolutely undecipherable code language, when he rolled his hands, and we were supposed to understand it as "and". I told you it was highly encoded. We probably had 13 to 14 rounds of it, when we reached Mahabalipuram (Mamallapuram), famous for its beaches and beaches alone. Did anyone say for historical monuments and world heritage sites??!!!

  Reaching there, we straight away headed to the beach, walking past the Shore Temple. Once there, we immediately started off with football. The most obvious team division was Odd vs Even roll numbers, cause that's how our dear Dept. has managed to divide and rule over us. The game was great, obviously because we won! And here it was Sohini and the even Meghana, who reveled their immense determination to win, no matter what, with their awesome defending. Shame odd batch.. :P 

  After playing for about 45 minutes, and getting the "feel" of scorching sun, we headed to get the "feel" of water. With strict instructions from my home ministry, I was not to go into the water at all. But then I thought maybe I ll just go, dip my legs for some time and come back. But then I was forgetting with whom I was. Within 10 minutes, I was completely wet. Abraham P Vinod, K. V. Siddharth, K Sreeteja and Rohan Sriram, I ll have my day.. :P. But honestly guys, I really would have missed all that fun if you had not done that. 

  We got wet, we got dirty (with sand!), we got sun burnt, we had loads of fun.

We ensured we were safe by forming small chains and going into water. And here, I must mention Abraham, who lost his glasses, almost blind (-8), (I know how it feels without glasses, with half the power of yours) still managed to enjoy the whole trip, without any issues at all. Hats off Ab.

  After all this, we were obviously hungry, and headed to a restaurant. (I advise pure vegetarians to not read this paragraph.. :P) We were in a sea shore, we had to try out sea food. So we took the menu, saw what all we could eat, and ordered one curry each of fish (not sure but tasted like pamphlet), prawn, and squid. And of course there were the good old non veggie dishes, Biriyani and Chicken with paratha, in case the experiment with sea food turns bad. 

 

^ We the Non Vegetarians!!!! Aaaaannndddd of course the Pure Vegetarians and one day vegetarians_ (Sigh!!!)

  After lunch, a round of chocolates and two to three rounds of ice-cream, we headed to the Tiger Caves. Anticipating real tigers in proper caves, I was disappointed. It turned out to be just rocks, apparently with faces of tigers, to me they looked more like monkeys. But the scenic, cleaner beach here made up for the disappointment. After this, we headed to the Kovalam beach, the so called best kept secret, turned out to be really really crowded and you-know-what Indian beaches are known for. We played dodge ball here and we lost obviously because the time keeper was an odd person.. :P, but it was fun!! 

  Obviously every good things come to an end. At dusk we started off for Chennai. Determined to make the whole trip memorable, we did not leave even a single moment without enjoying. Even when everyone was tired, we still managed to dance and sing in the bus... :)

The trip was in all an awesome experience. The biggest revealation of the trip was probably Jobin's. Anyone seeing him for the first time, would know, he is a very very serious type of person, but that perception completely changed when he showed off the really cool and funky new look, danced and sung!!
I do not know what part of me I revealed, but it was great fun!! "Elec is definitely fun!!... :D"
In the end I would just add, a rephrased version of a famous quote, "Ultimately whoever does whatever to us, the bottom line is, we will........."

The Food Theory!

And my obsession with food continues. In my last post "I am still a child!", I had proposed the "food equation". In this post, I intend to develop the complete "food theory!"

Introduction:

The "food theory" is a desperate attempt of a foodaholic to generalize the amount of food he can eat. It also has a various other applications, as described later in the section "applications".

Theory:

Assuming the ideal case, i.e. appetite is infinite, i.e. there is no natural (inbuilt) resistance to eat the food, the amount of food one can eat will depend on its taste alone (assuming no effect of ambiance, i.e. you would eat the same amount of the same food served along a lakeside with view of the setting sun and the rising moon, as well as alongside a buffalo and a pig in the midst of their holy pool of shit!). So first we need to setup a scale for taste. And its pretty simple. Assume the base level to be that of home food. Taste (T) can vary from -infinity to +infinity, i.e. food at messes in IIT Madras, Chennai, India to food at heaven. By personal experience, followed by stringent data fitting, I have arrived at the following relationship:

f=k*exp(T)+c

where k is a constant of proportionality and c is a constant corresponding to the minimum amount of food you have to eat to survive.

To find out the values of k and c, all you have to do is first come and eat at First/Second floor of Himalaya, IIT Madras, Chennai, India, precise coordinates: 12.9870 Latitude, 440.2632 Longitude. This amount will be the value of c for you, cause T here is -infinity (Note: I also found a new definitiion for infinity ;)). Now forget all the harassment you had to go through at this place, and head for some home made food.
K=(Amount of food you had at home - c). Cause in the defined scale, k_home=0.

Now let's define appetite. Appetite would depend only on time from last meal. Again by practical data, this time do not ask how, its linear. Hence,

A=pt

p is constant of proportionality and t is time. Now this term would represent resistance to food in the food equation. So lets define Antipetite (Resistance to eat food)=1/A.

Therefore the food equation becomes: f=k*exp(T)+c-1/A.

Note that this can go to negative. If it goes negative beyond a particular value, defined as the Vomit Threshold, you will vomit.

Applications:

• You can calculate/predict precisely the amount of food you will eat in your next meal.
• The prediction may even help you decide your menu even before going to a restaurant, if you know T for it.
• You can also predict the time, when you are going to vomit, and save yourself from some humiliation.
• Or even better, you can time/synchronise your vomit to a particular event. Vomiting can work wonders to get you out of something, if executed properly.

Drawbacks:

• Effects of ambiance has been ignored.
• No explanation of what happens to the food after entering into the stomach, known as the "excreation process". I have no intentions of thinking about it. If intrested, please stay away from me.

I am still a child!

Oh I am so childish...I still want everything that a tiny tot would like.
I love pandas and parrots and dogs and rabbits.
    I still search for my rabbit, which went missing 7 yrs back.
I still get angry, when my wishes aren't fulfilled. 
I still don't understand, when I am feeling hungry, and when I am not!
    At any instant of time, the amount of food I can consume is proportional to the
    exponential of its taste, and absolutely independent of appetite, or probably my
    appetite is infinite. Basically my digestive system functions like a non linear two port
    network, more like an ideal op-amp in a negative feedback loop. The infinite gain is
    analogous to my appetite, and the parameter being fed back is the taste of the food
    input to my mouth.
I still haven't been able to please my mother with my handwriting. 
I still have a piggy-bank, and in two years at IIT, I have collected a little over 240 Rs.. \m/. 
I still have all my milk teeth preserved. Probably the reason why I haven't met my tooth fairy yet.
I still have all the pens in which I ever wrote, whatever condition they might be in.
I love preserving my memories.
I love going to zoos and theme parks and museums. 
I still get glued to aquariums wherever I see. 
I still crave for the seat with the "best view", in whichever mode of transport I travel in.
I love anything and everything sweet. 
I love anything and everything colourful. 
I still don't know/understand/get the feeling of hatred.
I still feel guilty swearing at someone. Hence swearing and the so called "bad words" have never been part of my vocabulary
I still watch POGO and Cartoon Network, and almost 100 GB in my hard disk is filled with animation movies. 
I generally eat like a baby dinosaur, and sleep like a hibernating polar bear, and hence "Who let the dogs out" is the worst song ever, cause it wakes me up every morning :X 
I love listening to stories from my grandmother. 
I love arbitrarily stapling stuff. 
I still find the sound of flushing water funny! 
I have a bag which says "I am what I am" and I am what I am, the same old shy little Ankit that I always was.

The most inspiring lecture ever....

The most inspiring words I have ever heard....

 

Damn i just broke my vow, not to put anything external, in here, but this lecture was so amazing and inspiring, that it had to figure out here, in my archive of great memories... :-)

The perfect imperfection

Sometimes in life, bad things happen, but sometimes in life, things start off badly, but end up good!! A similar thing happened with me few days back. The first day at my intern, I was given a pair of gum boots, and an overcoat. I was asked to wear them everyday. But as luck would have it, I had left my overcoat at home one day, and realized it just before reaching the place. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't dare to go tell a Japanese that I wanted to break one of his rules, I couldn't think of going back 72 km to get it from home, daring 9 o'clock Delhi traffic either. So going in was absolutely not possible that day. I was really disappointed on my act of carelessness and irresponsibility. Probably seeing me sad or I don't know what, Bittu bhaiya offered me to show me what he did all day long after leaving me at the place. He promised it would be really great. I didn't had anything better to do either. So I said fine.

He then took me to a place just behind the plant, a small peak of sorts, which had a small temple on it and it could be seen from quite a far away. And when we reached there, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was nothing like I could have ever imagined in a place like Delhi. It was a really beautiful place. A cute little temple shrining the epitome of love of that of Radha and Krishna. Peacocks dancing in their full glory, and peahens admiring them as was I. The cool breeze that could heal any kind of heat due to the summer, and the peace of mind that came absolutely free along with it, felt heavenly. The greenery all around felt like I was back in IIT-M. I had probably done something absolutely right, that I was getting all this instead of the artificial jungle in the plant with inanimate humanoids and an air filled with the smell of grease and sounds of engines revvying around, perfect ingredients to cook you a headache and hence drive you crazy. 

The place was great but with the place also came a realization. A realization as to where we are taking our home, our planet earth to. I found myself facing the ugly truth head on. I was amidst a perfect contrast that our world is facing currently. On one side there was the lovely backdrop of a green terrrain, the seamlessly flowing air, filled with the smell of sand just moistened due to the fresh showers, and incense emanating from the temple. The sounds of birds chirping and the jingling bell echoing around. Peacocks doing their mujra and I seriously do not have any more words to explain the setting. Here are some photographs if they could help me explain:

 

And on the other side there was the booming metropolis, the hustling bustling city life, and all its mallices. I was awefully gazing at the tens of thousands of newly assembled cars that would hit the Indian and European roads within the next 15 days. Then there was the concrete jungle, with no tinge of green seen anywhere around, fire guzzling chimneys and the dark smoke coming out of them adorning the blue sky.

 

 

Is this how we want our future to be? Is this what we want our future generations to inherit from us?? Food for thought!!

Here is a song (the NDTV GREENATHON anthem) a true anthem for the cause.

You can click here for all the photos I took that day. I don't know whether it was the "awesome mausum" or the quaint little place that I saw, I was just in the mood and went on clicking and clicking and clicking.....

Eat Eat Eat

Mothers, they don't need introduction, do they?? Everything about them is just perfect, except probably one aspect. Their mission(s) in life when it comes to their children, which generally are the following: first: eat; second: eat; and third: EAT!!!

  They see you after some days, even if its a week, the first thing that they observe (by default I guess) is how thin you have become. They would prabably say the same, even if you had doubled your size!! They seem to have a myth that the more someone eats (and the more precisely includes the vegetables and fruits you hate the most), the healthier they become. I do not know how one gets to this generalization?!! There has to be some other alternative... and I seriously hate the guy who delivers vegetables to our house... bloddy, is there anything left that cannot be home-delivered??

  And when you complain, either they get into their "emotional atyachaar " mode, at the end of which you just have to shut up and eat whatever they give or to the "extremely innovative" mode!! I do not know how they can be this innovative?? More dry fruits find their way into my Matar Paneer than matar and paneer put together. Apples find their way into my mango shake!! and the killer of it all, Karela find their way into Dalma (a typical oriya mixed veg curry, which never had karela!!). Imagine karela in your mixed veg curry perfectly camouflaged, and you find it out later, geez!!! And this is just the beginning, I do not know Dal aur kitna kala hai?? quite literally....

My Summer Wishlist

MANGOES!!!
Beware all you delicious mangoes, cause Ankit is going to chop you, shake you up, sandwich you, and search all possible ways to gobble you into his stomach....

First and foremost PUT PEACE!!!
   This semester has been a hell of sorts. All of my weekdays in class, well, most of it, Saturdays in labs, and Sundays, Ummm ummm umm I need to refer to the dictionary, does anyone remember what a Sunday is/was??? Well, let me define Peace for myself. As soon as I reach home, my schedule is going to be a simple four step process, wake up at 11, have lunch, go back to sleep, wake up at 6pm, have dinner and sleep by 9, oh that was just two steps wasn't it?? (In case you are thinking, why do I need to wake up for lunch and dinner as well, well, that's one of the core reasons, why I would be in home, besides, my mother won't let me do that, I hope she doesn't know about my eating patterns here in insti...)

MOVIES!!
  This summer is seriously going to be freakin awesome in this regard. Sequels to some of my favourites, and some of the most anticipated movies ever are coming up this summer. Here's my list of musts:

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (May 20th)
Kung Fu Panda 2 (May 26th) (First day show for sure)
      Awesome as expected. The furious five and the dragon warrior save Kung Fu. And I love pandas.. :D 
Ready (June 3rd)
      Hilarious, action, filled with Salman's crazy stuff.
Cars 2 (June 24th)
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (June 24th)
     Teaches you life man! One of the best movies I have ever seen. And I am seriously going to follow it. I am going to forget all my worries, fears and live my life. The thoda kaam, thoda discipline and lots of masti, happy life I used to. After all, Zindegi definitely nahin milegi dobara so what's the point carrying all those worries on your head! Just forget them and say cheers to life.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (July 1st)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II (July 15th)
      A fitting end to the biggest saga of our generation. What more, Harry potter and Ronald Weasley have kids now.
Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (July)

Any other Friday left?? oh yes there are vacancies... help me fill them as well :D
Any more suggestions??

Go Fish
  No seriously. I want to go fishing!!, well, literally, fishing. Fishing used to be my favourite past time at my grandfathers place, back in Orissa (oh no no we are not fishermen by the way, we have a small lake, and it has fishes in them). But its been more than five long years since i have done that last!! This time around, I am determined to stay a bit longer than the usual 2 day trip in the past few years... lets see if I can get this done...

IPL:
  It's the fourth season already and I haven't watched a single live!!! This time at least I hope to watch one..

Now for some serious stuff:

Internship:
   I hope I can make my internship a learning expedition of sorts, and make it a great fun filled experience. I hope to learn the real world applications of all the stuff I have done in theory as yet, and try and innovate something by myself...!!! pretty high hopes... but you never know... This is going to occupy my first 50 days of summer.

Shaastra Circuit Design Challenge (SCDC):
  The very fact that I am the first 3rd year coordinator ever for this event (previous coords were all 4th years, since this event has begun), straight away hangs a sword over my head, to try and maintain its standards, if not better. Its one of the trademark events of Shaastra and the flagship event of Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Shaastra, with cash prize worth 40K!! (I am sorry if I am sounding like publicizing my event already...) Stay put for the problem statements...

Projects:
  The last month of summer, I ll be back here in Chennai, fulfilling my commitments to all my current projects. I hope to do a lot of progress during this interval and step closer to the final goal. True that this means I ll be all alone on my 20th birthday something that has never happened to me before..., but when at profession, personal errands come later.

Heat Index

  The other day, after 6 hours of continuous work on an insane project, I was absolutely drained. I was working in CFI, cursing for the first time that Sunday was a holiday, cause if it weren't, labs in my department would have been open, and I would have been working at 21*C, <10% humid environment instead of 37*C and somewhere around 90% humidity!! After I came back to room, I had a bath, a 500ml of Grapo fizz, and 1L of glucose, and yet was feeling bad, dehydrated, and sort of feverish. This made me wonder, was it really 37*C, cause 37*C on any other day, I could have taken it with pleasure, oh not really but still wouldn't have been this bad, afterall its my body temperature on any normal day. A little googling gave me the answers.

 And the answer is the Heat Index. As I am writing, Chennai's thermometric temperature is 86*F or 30*C but the apparent temperature is 99*F or 37.222*C. So why is it so??!! Here's the answer:

  Our body loses excess heat in three ways — radiation, convection and evaporation. If the blood circulating just beneath the skin is at a higher temperature than the surrounding air, heat is lost through the first two ways. When the outside temperature is higher than the body temperature, evaporation is the body's way of losing heat. We start sweating and the evaporation from the skin keeps us cool. The problem is that the capacity of air to hold water vapour is not finite; it can only hold a particular amount at a particular temperature. The term used to indicate how much of that capacity has been used up is relative humidity — the ratio of vapour contained to the maximum the air can hold, expressed as a percentage. So, the higher the relative humidity, the lower will be the capacity of air to hold any more water vapour. That means evaporation slows down and hence its cooling effect too is slowed down, making us feel hotter.

Fig: A screen shot from Weatther underground. Click on pic to expand.

Courtesy: Google, Times of India & Weather Underground

The force that unifies India

Well, what else can it be, It's Cricket!! Whenever I see the whole India celebrating, on TV, after a huge triumph on field, I get reminded of two particular lines from 'Madhushala';

मंदिर मस्स्जिद बैर कराती 

एक करती मधुशाला 

     How true!! And it very well applies to cricket as well. It sees no religion, no caste, no status, no regionalism... It's all the same for everyone, the emotions, the sudden rush of patriotism, the sense of pride, and of course the warm blood getting warmer. 

     It's really great watching Delhi going to one of those mini Diwali modes, Kolkata getting drowned in the syrup of the sweet Rasogullas, Chennai getting frenzy in one of those Rajnikant styles, and Mumbai well, celebrating with all the Tare Zameen Par. You see images of Bhangra pouring in from Chandigarh, all the folk singers, with their tweaked versions of the ever romantic Rajasthani folk songs, to fit to the occasion, from Jaipur, the actual heros of the nation, enjoying themselves in the most weird fashion ever from Srinagar, or may be even from the most dreaded sectors of Drass, Kargil and Batallic. If the images from the rest of the country are mind boggling, the images from just outside the venue of the game are even more so. You see people dancing in a form called, well I don't know, may be a mixture of Kathak, kuchipudi, and Odissi!! ; with the tricolor proudly clutched in their hands.

    Now that India is in the finals, and playing Sri Lanka today, I just hope that these celebrations continue even after 11 O'Clock tonight. I just hope, I get to see all these, ummm!! get to hear all these through all your pings on to my g-talk. I just hope.........

Go India!!! 1.21 Billion (1,21,01,93,422 to be precise) people will be there cheering for you tonight....

Time Machine

  Well, not exactly, I am referring to my alarm clock, yes the very clock which is responsible for destroying my wonderful and sweet dreams every morning, fortunately went mad, and started clocking in the opposite direction. Wise clock went anti clockwise!!!
   I wish it could actually take me back in time to those lighter and brighter days of school, or may be even a little before I was born...

3G., an experiment that went absolutely awry...

<This is what I wrote before realising what had happened to me>
 " 3G, the next big thing in India, is finally here. I was so excited, when I saw the full page ad. of Vodafone 3G in TOI, today, and obviously, as I love to try out new things, went ahead and activated it on my phone. And believe me, as the ad. says, its "faster, smarter and better", it actually is.... The biggest difference, you would straight away find is the speed of the Internet, loading gmail, which would take around 7-8 seconds on 2G, loaded within 3 seconds in 3G. Now that's a huge difference!!!

   Then I checked out all the other services available, and the only other services available as of now were Live TV and video calling. Looking forward to try out video calling, but tried out the Live TV, and whats more... it costs just Rs.7 a day, to view any channel you would like. Love it!!! Watched ESPN live (no buffering after the initial one), Cartoon Network !!(In case you are giggling at me, com'on, there is a child hidden in every person..), NDTV, Times Now, Discovery, Animal Planet, UTV Movies, to name a few. Now who would be more proud than me, after-all even I am going to be one of those "Communication Engineers"......(whats wrong in bragging a bit...:-D)"

Everything was great and I was loving it and showering praises on it, when I suddenly realised that I had been robbed off of nearly half a K!!! My balance was at a deficit of Rs 431 !!!.. Damn it!!! this one went absolutely haywire....money, nearly 24 hours of absolutely no connectivity.... huh!!! Seemed like I had developed an uncanny knack of creating trouble for myself, out of nowhere...sigh!!! But what's the fun in life if everything goes as you wish...!!! What say??!!

When I decided to make a pizza....

  probably sun rose from west, probably I had gone mad or probably I was so bored that it drove me to the levels of lunacy one day during my winter vacation of 14 days!! in the second year (Dec. 2010), that I decided to try my hand on a completely unexplored field, cooking!!! It took a lot of effort, and finally (yeah!!!) I convinced the "Master-chef" at home, my mom, to let me try out stuff. With a strict no-no for the use of the gas stove (taking due considerations of my past records), I was limited to the microwave only. I always try finding positives in every situation, and therefore was happy that at-least I was allowed to use that, moreover it was just the previous sem I had learnt how a microwave oven works, so was excited.

  Then began the search for the dish, and somehow, the first thing that struck was pizza. I had seen mother doing one of those, so thought wasn't going to be much of a hassle. Asked mother to arrange all the ingredients for me. Then it was the turn of the rookie, I arranged stuff on that gloomy base, the best I could, and it was ready to go into the oven. And then whatever happened in the oven is history !! Don't even dare asking me what happened, else there will be consequences....
I tried my level best to give it a face lift and:

  I thought, would better get back to things I was good at, but somehow managed to calm my self and give a second chance. And this time it was pop-corn!! I expected them to pop out white but they came out black!, not again!!!
  This was it, I almost decided to drop the word "cooking" out of my dictionary when a brilliant plan came to my mind. I was good at turning things into black ! in the oven, so why not make something that is supposed to be black !! So i made this:

a chocolate cake, and believe it or not, this time I was successful. It was so good that I finished off the whole thingy all by myself within a day. After-all I wasn't that bad, I proved it Yeah!! I did it... :D 

Birthday Blues

  Birthday, the day, some years back, which is responsible for ones very presence. Yes its absolutely one of the happiest days in ones life. What would you do typically on your birthday? Go to a temple in the morning, finish your wish-list of gifts and things you would like to do/achieve by your next birthday, most importantly spend a lot of time with your family and friends throughout the evening, and then the rest of the night unfolding all the awesome gifts and wishes you would have received. This is what you would typically do, of-course surprises and exceptions will always be there.
   But things are a "little" different when you are in a place like IIT Madras.You better do the following.

• First change or remove your birthday date from your fb account, and hope no one among your college "friends" (you better recognize them as friends or else...) remembers your b-day.
• Keep a good look at your friends throughout the previous day, any suspicious movements/ any unreasonable or sudden visits to ccd by your friends, find a hideout immediately, and get underground before 10 pm the previous day of your b-day.
• Do not attend to any unknown numbers or numbers of your potential bump givers after 10 the previous night..
• If you happen to miss any of these precautions, better get prepared with lots of ice and pain killers, cause you are gonna, well experience it yourself... :P

  It must be feeling like "why, why was I born at all". All those filmy dialogues "Dhikkar hai mere janam hone pe", "dost dost naa raha", "kutte kaminey.....", "#@%*&$#", "Aasman se gire, khajoor pe aatke"...would be on your mind. Let me tell you, typically what happens. You would be in utter pain searching for a soft place to sit, if you happen to show up your face at home with all those sticky chunks of the so called your b-day cake (which was used less to eat and more swahad on you), your mom would reply from the door "Its my son's birthday, but definitely not Haloween!!!!". 
Good thing is that I have never experienced it yet, thanks to the timing of my b-day. i still continue to celebrate my b-day the first way (but) minus friends.Yes it does feel a little bad that way, but life is a great mixture of happiness and not so good feelings, accept everything whatever comes positively and be optimistic. 

My Dream World...

My dream world, a world full of Tweeties and Jerries,

                                        a world full of chocolates and cakes,

                             a world full of fluffy toys and vuvuzelas, 

                                        a world full of love and affection.

My dream world, a world full of imagination and creativity, 

                                        a world full of new friends and great teachers,

                             a world full of superheroes and toy cars, 

                                        a world full of love and affection.

My dream world, a world full of choices and no forced home-works, 

                                        a world full of  role models and continued friendships,

                             a world full of virtual reality and real Virtuality,

                                        a world full of love and affection.

My dream world, a world without any boundaries and limitations,

                                        a world full of life and passion,

                              a world full of pizzas and puddings,

                                        a world full of love and affection.

My dream world, a world that works for humanity and not for money,

                                        a world full of humble bosses and smart colleagues,

                              a world full of tech savvy gadgets and cool cars,

                                        a world full of love and affection.
My dream world, a world with a loving and caring life partner,
                                        who would live for me and I would live for her,
                              a world with small and wonderful kids,
                                        a world full of love and affection.

My dream world, a world full of spirituality and truthfulness,

                                        a world with no violence and wars,

                              a world with family and friends,

                                        a world full of love and affection.

      These are my dreams. Now go back and read them again, but this time, see the first stanza from the perspective of a baby, the second from that of a small kid new to school, the third from that of a high school kid, the fourth from that of a college student, the fifth from that of a man, the sixth from that of a married man, and the seventh from that of a senior citizen.....